Texas Tribune: Castro backed Obama's immigration policies

[highplainsdem]

Link to tweet

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/09/14/julian-castro-testified-support-obamas-immigration-policies-2013/

Castro again used the issue to pillory Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden at the debate Thursday night at Texas Southern University in Houston, saying the former vice president wants to “take credit for Obama’s work but not have to answer to any questions” about controversies like immigration enforcement while he was in the White House.

But the San Antonio Democrat, who also served under President Barack Obama, hasn’t always been a liberal darling on the border issues that have animated so much of the conversation on the campaign trail.

In 2013, while testifying before the Republican-led Congress, Castro gave a full-throated endorsement of the border and immigration policies advocated by Obama — who critics labeled the “deporter in chief” for his aggressive immigrant removal policies — and touted the completion of enforcement measures that included fencing along the U.S-Mexico border.

“Under this administration, there has been tremendous progress with regard to enforcement,” Castro, then-mayor of San Antonio, told the House Judiciary Committee in February 2013 in response to a question from then-U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Republican, on whether interior enforcement should play a role in discouraging undocumented immigrants from crossing the U.S. border. “In fact, the triggers in the 2007 proposal have just about all been met. But going forward, of course, enforcement is part of the conversation.”

The “triggers” in that 2007 proposal — which were supposed to be enacted before immigrants could get “amnesty” for being in the country illegally — included vehicle barriers and “370 miles of border fencing,” plus the “detention until removal of 100% of aliens apprehended on the Southwest border” and enough detention beds to accommodate at least 31,500 undocumented migrants per day, according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service report.

Ruth Ellen Wasem, the author of the report and now a professor of policy practice at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, said the triggers were put in the proposed bipartisan 2007 legislation to assure opponents of legalization that “enforcement was ratcheted up” before unauthorized residents in the country could gain lawful status.

“Even progressive Democrats like Obama recognized that, in order to have the votes to enact immigration reform, you’d have to demonstrate that the matter of undocumented migration had been addressed and was under control,” Wasem said.

[Gothmog]

1. This is interesting

[highplainsdem]

3. I thought so. Especially since this was more than a year before he joined the Obama administration.

[OKNancy]

2. I'll be magnanimous

unlike Castro... He has obviously changed his mind. People grow and change according to the circumstances and the times.

[JI7]

8. maybe, but the way he attacks others over it come off as opportunistic

[Jose Garcia]

4. Perhaps Castro, not Biden, is the one with the bad memory

[mopinko]

5. i said right after the debate that castro had lit himself on fire.

little did i know how much fuel was laying around.

sad.

[emmaverybo]

6. Desperation attacks are never a good look. Long ago, I really thought Castro would be our emerging

star. He gave a great keynote. I thought he was one to watch. He simply was unable to contain his
ego and anxiety.

[highplainsdem]

10. He's been very disappointing.

[JI7]

7. people in Texas seem to already know him which is why he is unpopular

but the beltway msm keeps pushing his candidacy and acting like he would help win hispanics and Texas.

i would say he would probably decrease the chances of Democrats winning Texas .

[dalton99a]

13. One reason is he never bothered to learn Spanish - from 2015:

The prospect that he might be a running mate to Hillary Clinton made Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro a target over his Spanish speaking skills, something that many Latino politicians are all too familiar with.

In a story published Thursday, Politico paraphrased an unnamed source saying Castro’s ethnic background “may not be as effective in appealing to Hispanic voters as some believe.”

“Tim Kaine speaks Spanish much better than Julian Castro does,” the Clinton ally told Politico. Kaine is a Virginia Democrat who spent a year working in Honduras with Jesuit priests.

...

But what appeared to be a flippant matter to the "Clinton ally" is one that can be agonizing and even embarrassing to some Latinos, something that opens them to questioning about their Latino identity.

Former U.S. Rep. Charles Gonzalez of Texas experienced painful ridicule and embarrassment over his Spanish speaking skills, often at the hands of other Latinos.

“There were people who tested me all the time when I was in office, just to see if I spoke Spanish,” said Gonzalez, whose parents and grandparents spoke Spanish and who like Castro is from San Antonio.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/clinton-ally-skewers-spanish-hud-secretary-julian-castro-n370731

[Cha]

9. Castro should own up to his past

"full-throated endorsement".

Good it's in the Texas Tribune.

Gracias, highplainsdem

[dalton99a]

11. Castro endorsed more "boots on the ground" and enhanced "interior enforcement"

But when it came to “border security,” Castro endorsed more “boots on the ground” at the border and enhanced “interior enforcement” — which refers to the removal of undocumented immigrants from inside the country.

[Skya Rhen]

12. Let's see how soon it takes for someone to write a post in defense of this indefensible hypocrisy...